Tens of thousands of batteries that were damaged in a fire in January at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in Moss Landing will be removed, treated and transferred to a recycling facility in Nevada starting Sept. 22, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday.
Two truckloads a day of the batteries will be driven 330 miles to the American Battery Technology Company in McCarran, Nevada, a facility in the desert about 15 miles east of Reno that conducts commercial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling.
The company recovers materials such copper, aluminum, steel and intermediate lithium from old batteries.
“Damaged batteries can be unstable,” said Kazami Brockman, a civil engineer and on-scene coordinator for the EPA’s Moss Landing cleanup. “We are focused on removing the batteries from the building and sending them for disposal and recycling in as safe and quick a way as possible.”
The Moss Landing plant is a former PG&E natural gas-fired power plant located along Monterey Bay that was converted five years ago by Vista, a Texas energy company, into a huge facility where solar power and other electricity could be stored in batteries for use at night and during period of high electrical demand.
It caught fire on Jan. 16, sending up a cloud of toxic smoke, and causing authorities to evacuate roughly 1,200 local residents for three days. The incident, the cause of which is still under investigation by state officials, generated international news and raised safety questions about battery storage plants, which have been constructed at a record pace in recent years as California and other states expand renewable energy.
Vistra’s Moss Landing battery plant remains closed, as does a separate PG&E battery storage plant next door that was not involved in the fire and did not incur damage. A natural gas plant on the site continues to generate electricity.
There were roughly 100,000 battery modules that were at the facility. Of those, about 55,000 burned or were damaged. In the weeks after the fire, there were several small flareups that sent smoke over the plant.
Crews paid by Vistra and overseen by EPA de-linked all of the batteries from electrical equipment in March. After working out cleanup plans with EPA, local fire officials and other authorities, the company began demolishing the building Aug. 11.
Brockman said Wednesday that four or five trucks a day of construction waste, some of which includes asbestos, from the wrecked building are being trucked to the Hay Road Landfill in Vacaville. Vistra continues to keep a private, company-funded fire department on the site and air monitors measure air quality 24 hours a day there, he added.
The cleanup is expected to take about a year, he said.
Vistra has not said what it plans to do with the site. It is conducting an investigation. Last month, David Yeager, a company spokesman, said the battery removal will help speed that along.
The California Public Utilities Commission also is investigating the cause of the fire. A trade journal in March reported the company estimated $400 million in losses due to the fire. Lawsuits claim neighboring residents suffered health impacts.
Brockman said each of the battery modules — some of which did not burn — will be inspected, removed from its rack, cleaned and placed on pallets. They then will be connected to electrical equipment called load banks to offload their electricity to the grid before they are packaged and placed on trucks for Nevada.
Thermal cameras will be set up to detect any batteries that may heat up and be at risk of fire. Vistra has “battery isolation boxes” it can place over such batteries to further reduce the risk of a fire he added.
“It’s our goal to ensure that each battery is dealt with as quickly as possible for both the safety of the workers and community,” Brockman said, “and to maintain the speed of the operations.
More information can be found at https://www.epa.gov/ca/moss-landing-vistra-battery-fire